Pacific Century Group

American International Group Inc. agreed to sell its external fund management business to Hong Kong billionaire Richard Li's Pacific Century Group for about $500 million. The deal would lift to $9.8 billion the amount AIG will have raised through announced divestitures since its $182.5-billion government rescue 12 months ago.

American International Group Inc. agreed to sell its external fund management business to Hong Kong billionaire Richard Li's Pacific Century Group for about $500 million. The deal would lift to $9.8 billion the amount AIG will have raised through announced divestitures since its $182.5-billion government rescue 12 months ago.

Film and TV studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. said its MGM Networks TV group and PCCW Ltd. had agreed to launch an MGM Channel on Hong Kong's Now Broadband TV pay-television system. The launch of the channel, which will show films from MGM's 4,000-title library, highlights MGM's strategy over the last two years to form TV ventures in overseas markets. PCCW is the Hong Kong-based flagship operation for Asian communications company Pacific Century Group. Financial details were not disclosed.

"Michael is one of my best friends in the business, but I'd rather have a buffer dealing with him. It's because he's such a persistent salesman. He's a bulldog. He grabs you by the pants and is still there shaking you when you're trying to get away." --JAMES CAYWOOD, PACIFIC CENTURY GROUP "The more leveraged takeovers and buyouts today, the more bankruptcies tomorrow." --JOHN SHAD, FORMER CHAIRMAN, SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION "I don't think money has anything to do with what he does.

Strapped by a drastic decline in interest income, city officials are considering hiring a professional money management firm to increase earnings on the city's $22-million portfolio. City officials are reviewing proposals from several firms that claim that they can increase the city's interest income by as much as $300,000. The city plans to turn over roughly a quarter of its portfolio to a private investment group for a one-year trial, City Manager Arthur E. Jones said.

In an office unusually Spartan for one of Hong Kong's business elite, Richard Li calls out to his secretary to bring him a pen. "I'm in transition . . . moving from one office into another," explains Li, who last year turned down an offer from his father, billionaire Li Kashing, to be managing director of Hutchison Whampoa Ltd., the flagship conglomerate of the family empire. Instead, he accepted a lesser position in the family firm and set up his own company, Pacific Century Group.

After a two-day breather, the stock market resumed its 1985 rally Wednesday with a broad surge that took the Dow Jones industrial index up 21.31 points to a record 1,297.92 and set records in several broader market indicators. Analysts attributed the rise to investors' assumptions that interest rates will continue to decline and that inflation will remain low.

Last year at this time, the poster child for Asia's dot-com craze was Hong Kong entrepreneur Richard Li--the upbeat chairman of a flashy new company called Pacific Century CyberWorks Ltd. who cast himself as a Stanford grad with a can't-miss vision for the future. But falls have been fast for "new-economy" companies in Asia, and the situation has deteriorated so much that Li didn't even show up Wednesday when PCCW announced its annual results at a packed news conference.